Finding parallels and comparisons between the Hebrew revival and Athbheochan na Gaeilge is an old and honored pastime. Mar sin is fiú súil a thabhairt ar alt seo ar an New York Times inniu:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/world/middleeast/08hebrew.html

Dhá shliocht as:

But in a country where self-doubt and insecurity run deep, even a linguistic triumph can be a cause for concern. After such a meteoric comeback, some worry that the common language may already be in decline, popularized to the point where many Israelis can no longer cope with the rich complexities of traditional Hebrew prose.

Mr. Birnbaum, like most of the experts, views what is apparently the deterioration of Hebrew as a natural process, if it can be considered degeneration at all. The reality, they say, is not as bad as it sounds. Rather, the anxiety may stem less from the state of Hebrew and more from the Israeli state of mind.

Most pupils in Israel have to take Bible classes and Hebrew grammar classes.

The fact is that both seldom help to lower graded pupils to understand texts and lift their knowledge from the ground. They don't like reading, they have other things to do, more interesting.

They really don't like studying much.

The result is clear: they have severe problems in understanding what was intelligible for decades.

Of course there are much better pupils who have no problem, but those are pupils who had been invested in.

The deteriration is largely felt in idioms whose sense has been changed and in those that are hardly being used anymore.

I really think it's a natural development, and that Hebrew was enriched with many forms it never had preveiously, thanks to the mixture of population.

And, if I may add, Modern Hebrew is not ancient Hebrew from its inception. It's a mostly invented language, that's based on layers of ancient ones.

Modern Hebrew is like a test-case for the development of a language:
one can watch from a by-stander's position how it fastly changed its form - from the complicated and tightly-moulded forms in the beginning to the middle of the 20th century, into lighter free forms during the 80's and till today.

(Message edited by seabhac on August 09, 2008)

An-suimiúil, a Sheabhaic.

quote:

from the complicated and tightly-moulded forms in the beginning to the middle of the 20th century, into lighter free forms during the 80's and till today

Cosúil leis na foirmeacha "táite" agus "scartha" den bhriathar i nGaeilge?

In many senses there was a purism mode of the language:

strict enforcement of stress, and of what can be a séimhiú (b,g,d,k,p,t) that hasn't had much attention today.

And what is considered still today a foreighn influence: the adding of the direct object definite article to the defined subject in possessive expressions.

And other stuff.

(Message edited by seabhac on August 10, 2008)

(Message edited by seabhac on August 10, 2008)

This sounds familiar, too:

"There is the creeping foreign influence, as urban sophisticates pepper their Hebrew speech with accented English affectations like “please,” “sorry” and “whatever,” along with a noticeable loss of nuance and relative paucity of vocabulary in regular use."

If that is the case in a language spoken fluently by millions, and one that is not endangered and incessantly beseiged in its one homeland by a much more powerful langauge (as is the relationship between Irish and english), then why should there be anything but full expectation that at least the same would be true of an endangered, beseiged language like Irish?


and this:
"After such a meteoric comeback, some worry that the common language may already be in decline, popularized to the point where many Israelis can no longer cope with the rich complexities of traditional Hebrew prose."

...is simply to be expected in ANY language. I mean, modern students struggle with Shakespeare, most cannot derive meaning from Chaucer, and Beowulf is left completely unintelligible...it's not the end of the world for english, Hebrew, -or- Irish...

That might be true for Hebrew too, but then again, we're talking about a change that is taking place under our nose, and we don't know anything about it untill we suddenly are faced with an irreparable situation that we don't know even where to start repairing it.

Something like "his mother died on him" (biblical) meaning he was fuffering from his mother's death, becomes "his mother is dead fond of him".

And of course there are new idioms with every new day.

As natural as it might be, we have extra forces helping in that. We need to neutralise these.

But, if a healthy language can't "neutralize" those forces, how can one with so much less capital in the minds of the citizens of the only country where it is officially spoken?

See, I find it interesting that you use the term "repair"...I don't necessarily agree that there is something that needs to be "fixed"...it isn't that Irish is "breaking"...Irish simply "is," and it is we who decide to place an abstract value on the changes

Icelandic, with barely 300,000 speakers (virtually all of home speak English as well), has managed to halt widespread anglicisation, so clearly it can be done even with a minor language. It's all a question of speakers' attitudes.

(Not that I don't agree with you, Antaine, that a lack of conservatism is not necessarily a problem in need of "repair". In fact, its presence in "healthy" languages is good evidence that promiscuous borrowing need not be take as a sign of imminent language death.)

Yes, but with 300,000 daily fluent speakers, Icelandic is much healthier than Irish, they are also geographically isolated and did not spend 800 years occupied by the english.

I was talking about repair, but I was referring only to the literary language. See, I think today we should differentiate between the spoken language, that is changing and developing, and the literary language, which should be part of their knowledge throughout their study of the language.

And in this there's a long-term task we have to do.

This diffeerentiation, BTW, was not possible until the 80's.

There is a similar situation with the literary language in Irish which is mostly calque free - but nobody reads except for oddballs like me...

lol

quote:

See, I think today we should differentiate between the spoken language, that is changing and developing, and the literary language, which should be part of their knowledge throughout their study of the language.

If the literary language is not changing and developing in tandem with the spoken language, then Irish is already dead.

So many pronouncements elsewhere on the board today about how Irish is doomed as we speak -- or on the road to utter perdition as a degraded creole -- if it so much as changes -- or if it doesn't! I'm here to "witness" that it's a healthy language *still* precisely because it can encompass so much "chaos": so many layers of conservatism, "correctness", hyper-correctness, sloppiness, borrowing, old spellings, new spellings, Classical Modern Irish and Gaelscoilis, word play, code-switching, in-your-face-deliberate rule-breaking, ignorance and scholarship. As usual, it's the on-lookers who expect Irish to be some sort of virginal embodiment of Goodness, Purity, and Timeless Tradition who are wringing their hands.

(Message edited by dennis on August 12, 2008)

A Dhennis, is an-cheart atá agat! An labhraíonn an lucht so Gaelainn nó ná labhraíd siad ach fé Ghaelainn?

B'fhearr liom tuilleadh iontráil "macarónach" a scríobh--caithfinn sa dhóigh seo níos lú ama--ach tá eagla orm go ngeobhainn ar ghach taobh lochtú.

I left a message here which seems to have strangely vanished. I wonder why.
Someone's lacking a sense of humour.

Ná bíodh imní ort. Chonaic mé é. Tá áthas orm go dtaitníonn m'fhéasóigín leat. An bhfuil tú ag smaoineamh ar cheann a fhás?

Tá mé gránna go leor mar atáim.

Shíl Abraham Lincoln, fear a bhí sách mísciamhach, go mbeadh sé níos dathúla le féasóg air. Agus bhí an ceart aige! Ach cogar, an bhfuil tú amhulchach toisc go bhfuil tú cosúil le Cú Chulainn le linn na Tána? An féidir go bhfuil "ulchae smerthain" ag teastáil uait?

Admhóchad go raibh orm "smerthain" d'fhagháil i bhfoclóir.

Cár cheannuighis do 'ulchae smerthain'-sa? Gheobhainn m'airgead ar ais.

N'fheadar cé go díreach a bhfuil acmhainn grinn de dhíth air.


Mar a deirtear san clós gaelscoile, "Faigh saol, James"

Molann do dhíogras thú. Anois, dá ndíreofaí do thallann ar cuir le do chuid gaeilge* seachas a bheith ag spocadh i dteanga an namhaid ar daoine eile, bheidh muid ar fad níos fearr as!

* nó Gaedhilge nó pé leagan is ansa leat féin.

Antaine,

While it's true Iceland is geographically isolated and did not endure 800 years of English rule, they did endure 600-700 years of Danish rule and were treated very badly by the Danes. They weren't allowed to sing and dance b/c it was supposed to be "an act of the devil", so what they got obsessed with was storytelling (the sagas). The Danes still rule Greenland and I've read about Greenlandic being threatened by Danish in Greenland, but I haven't read up enough on it to say either way; Just a wee bit o' background for ya.

Iceland has a language commission for Icelandic which determines what new things will be called and also diligently fights English and Anglicized Icelandic (in public signs, etc); I know Ireland also has its own language commission but I honestly don't get the sense that they fight as fiercely for Irish as the Icelandic one does for Icelandic.
Just my two cents.

Btw, I love that simplistic but sharp coat of arms/shield you have for your avatar; where's it from?

Le meas,
Maidhc

(Message edited by gaeilgeoir on August 15, 2008)

:)

(Message edited by gaeilgeoir on August 15, 2008)

quote:

Iceland has a language commission for Icelandic which determines what new things will be called and also diligently fights English and Anglicized Icelandic (in public signs, etc); I know Ireland also has its own language commission but I honestly don't get the sense that they fight as fiercely for Irish as the Icelandic one does for Icelandic.

Language commissions can't force people to adopt their suggestions. All they can do is publicise them; after that, it's up to ordinary users of the language to integrate them into their usage. The different degrees of success are attributable more than anything to the attitudes of the respective populations.

As to why the Icelanders are more receptive to lexical conservatism than the Irish, well, that's an interesting question. Not sure how you'd go about answering without falling into the trap of telling just-so stories.

As for Greenlandic, it is spoken (and accepted) by both the European and native population on the island, so as far as I know, is in no danger of death. This seems to have occurred due to both populations arriving at a common identity. If a Greenlander is reading this, please tell us more!

Having looked into it more, it seems a push for Home Rule, which granted in 1979, has led to Greenlandic bi-linguals moving into positions of power, and a reduction of Danish mono-linguals

Home Rule doesn't equal independence, a chara...
"The Queen of Denmark, Margrethe II, remains Greenland's Head of State."

If the Queen of England were the United States' Head of State, independent we certainly would not be.

A Ghaeilgeoir,

Unless I missed something in the exchange, no one said that Home Rule did equal independence. It doesn't take full independence to change the composition of a territory's administration (and, with it, the relative prestige of the local languages). Despite the name, the current Prime Minister of Greenland, Hans Enoksen, is a Greenlandic monoglot.

"Home Rule doesn't equal independence, a chara... "

Yes, I know

Go raibh maith agat, a Dhomhnaillín.

Cad as?

As an eolas.

Is do Vicipéid ba cheart duit a bheith buíoch!